What should you write today? That’s a question that weighs on many a writer’s mind.

It doesn’t matter. Just write something.

I write for businesses as a living and write plays because I must. I know many, many people who work inside businesses. Those people thrive or fail with their ability to communicate clearly. They’re writers, too, even if they don’t claim the title. I’ve advised many a young person who looked forward to taking a job in business or some industry. They’re concerned about their course of study. I tell them this: learn to communicate and write clearly. You’ll learn everything else that you need to know from doing the work of the particular job.

I have also seen far too many fellow workers hoist with his (or her) own petard by dashing off a memo or email and not clearly writing what they meant. I’ve seen managers question workers, reevaluate their performance and status, all because of bad writing. I’ve seen friendships end over poorly written emails that escalate into catastrophic arguments. I’ve seen projects derailed and careers finished because of badly written specifications and plans.

Clear writing and communications are not trivial. It is the key quality of a skilled worker. Never, ever, dash something off. Write, read, and rewrite.

In fact, write it three times.

For today’s assignment, write me a memo or email explaining why you’ve missed a project deadline. Here’s the key: it’s your fault. You didn’t start early enough.

Your memo needs to state clearly why you missed the deadline, how you’ll get the project back on track, and what steps you’ll take in the future to insure that this does not happen again.

And the memo should not exceed 100 words.

Write it once, then read it and rewrite it. Then pause for at least one hour, then read, edit, and write it a third time. Make sure that there are no ambiguous messages. Make sure that your intent is clear. Make sure that nothing can be misunderstood or misconstrued. Don’t waste much space apologizing. Recognize your error and then fix the problem.

I expect your memo on my desk by the end of the day.

Writing Assignment: Write To Me Three Times is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

The list of companies promoting their own currencies is growing: Amazon, Microsoft (XBox), Facebook and more. It is uniformly a bad deal for consumers. All of the benefits, and I do mean all, flow to the corporation and only the most careful consumer can reap any benefit at all. The rest of us will end up, in a very real sense, working for those companies and receiving meager pay.

Store “script” only benefits the store. You, the consumer, will end up paying more, spending more, and owing more when you divorce one currency for another. A similar thing happens when I travel to the UK and lose track of the conversion between dollars and pounds. Any currency other than your own seems like so much play money until you total it up.

If you go to Disneyland or Disney World you are offered the “opportunity” to purchase “Disney Dollars,” the official currency of Disney theme parks. It seems fun. The kids enjoy them. But they are a very, very bad deal. While you’re at the park you can spend these special dollars, but many people keep some as souvenirs. Many of these Disney Dollars get left over from the trip, forever unused. Some people “burn them off” at the end of the trip by purchasing stuff they wouldn’t have bought. They’re only good on Disney properties. And the only benefit from all of this flows to the company. Good for Disney, bad for you.

Amazon is hoping to do the same thing. You can “earn” Amazon Coins, but you’ll need to spend them at Amazon.com. They are hoping to convince you to purchase things that you ordinarily might have waited to buy or not bought at all. You’ll buy things that exceed the value of the Coins that you have and need to pay for the rest in real, hard currency. It may seem like a deal to you, but the company just convinced you to make a purchase. And they’ll engage you in more activities to earn Coins, which will keep you on the Amazon.com site where you are likely to see things and make impulse purchases. When Amazon engages you in specific activities to “earn” Coins, you are exchanging your time and effort for their pay. That’s right: you’re working for Amazon and being paid in a currency that you can only use at their store.

Only the highly disciplined consumer can make these currencies work for themselves. Everyone else will spend more than they plan or realize and become more closely tied to the specific company. Which is exactly what the companies want.

I like Amazon, Disney, and, at times, even Microsoft (and I hold stock in all three companies). Not so much Facebook. But I don’t want them to own me. I don’t need or want loyalty programs and currencies to tie me to them. I expect their services and products to be enough.

Buyer beware. And to corporations: keep your hands out of my pocket.

Listen to Tennessee Ernie Ford. He knows the score. 

I Owe My Soul To The Company Store: Amazon Coins And Other Horrible Ideas is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

I hear others claim that they want to be writers, but they can’t write. They can’t find the time. They can’t think of things to write. They can’t think of things that are good enough to write. They have something big, important, and amazing in their heads but they don’t know where to start.

All of that is mere excuse-making. Just write.

Write something, anything. Write with no expectations. Write out the bad stuff. Write without a goal. Be horrified by what you write.

Just write.

At this time I’m about a quarter through a new play, the first draft. What I’ve written is awful. It completely sucks. It’s probably unintelligible and would seem out of sequence to others. But every day I pick up a yellow legal pad and write more. It’s demanding to be written. So I write.

Every day, I write more, knowing that almost everything that I write down on those yellow pads will not survive the rewrites to come. I’d be surprised if a single sentence makes it to the point that an actor would speak it.

This draft, as bad as it is, is good, so good, so important. Why? Because I’m writing it. I’m working, every day, to get it down on paper. It’s the process. It’s what has to happen. I’ve resigned myself to the work, embraced it, glorified in it. Each page scribbled out is a triumph.

And if it never sees the light of day, if no one else ever reads it, the act of writing, of creating, makes me stronger, more capable of writing what I hope are more and better things in future.

I don’t accept excuses from writing students, or from fellow writers. I ask only this question: did you write today?

Write For Today is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

My office is a complete disaster zone today. So is most of the house. But I’m finding that all I need is space to stand or sit. It’s enough space to work and write.

We’re having the master bedroom, bath, and closet completely remodeled. The explosion of stuff from emptying out those three rooms has crowded almost every other room in the house (sparing the kitchen, sunroom, and the theater, but not the theater lobby). My office, my retreat, is now mostly a closet. A rack of hanging clothes stands in front of the book case. Piles of sorted clothes cover the floor. I did manage to work through my inbox, but haven’t processed everything that accumulated during my recent down time from survey. All of that covers my desk. And the construction, with the almost constant sawing and hammering, is leaving a fine layer of dust on everything.

And yet, I work. I write. I have a little lap desk that I can use when I sit or recline on the bed that’s now in the middle of the living room. I’m filling yellow legal pads with a new play upon that portable desk. And I’ve got enough room to stand in front of my standing desk where I can write and work, too.

Clients don’t care if my office is sparse, minimal, and neatly organized. They don’t care if I work in a Zen garden. They don’t care about the tools I use. They only care that I deliver finely crafted work at the agreed upon time.

With that in mind I shove the piles to the side, wipe away the dust, and set myself to work. The work clears my mind of the mental clutter. There is only the work. The sounds, the mess, fade away for that time. There’s a retreat in work. Even the neighbors’ mowing and firing up the leaf blowers are just another instrument or two added to the symphony, no longer a cacophony.

In a few weeks, I hope, the construction will be finished and most things will go back to where they belong. The clutter will disappear. I’ll sort through and get ride of many extraneous things. The dust and debris will be cleaned as well. And nothing will change about the work.

Minimalism doesn’t have to do with things at all. I’ve given up believing that I have that much control over many of the things that surround me. But I can organize my mind. I can get to the work. Then everything, the noise, the clutter, the stuff, become meaningless.

Carve Out The Space To Work is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Minimalism can be a beautiful thing. Having only what you need, and having those things be beautiful, is an extremely attractive idea to me.

Clutter is another thing all together. One can have only the things that one needs, but they can be jumbled, chaotic, and messy. Clutter is the arrangement of things, not the quantity of them.

The true beauty of minimalism only emerges when there is also order, empty space, and serenity of mind.

If I have an empty room, but don’t have the things that I need at that moment, I am not serene.

I have a surprising hero of minimalism and order: James Bond. 007 is a master of always having just what he needs, but those things never cause a bulge in his perfectly tailored suit or that take up more space than the tiny boot of an antique Austin Martin. From all appearances (aided by movie magic), Bond is relaxed, confident, and, yes, serene. Nothing clutters the passenger seat or dashboard. There are no empty fast food containers (heaven forbid!) on the floorboards of his car/submarine/helicopter.

Real soldiers are festooned with all of the things that they may need. My desk often looks like it is similarly ready for battle. But at times I can clear it all away, like a ship’s crew preparing for a storm. That’s when I play the Bond Theme, smile wryly to myself, and wish that I had a tie to straighten.

Minimal or not, clutter can creep in. Take care of that, won’t you 007?

Minimalism And Clutter is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Tomorrow holds such promise. And yet, if we’re honest, tomorrow will probably be much like yesterday.

There’s a great focus online about productivity and “getting things done.” It’s easy to think that you can control what you do today and tomorrow and beyond by making lists, plans, and endless to-dos. If you discover the right process you are totally in control.

And yet, when we’re honest, many of us don’t do what we planned.

It’s OK. I’m perfectly happy to abandon plans and to do something else or nothing at all. But I am uncomfortable when I compare the plan to reality.

That tension is a great thing to write about.

For today’s assignment, write two short pages about your plans for tomorrow. The first page will be your idealized plan for what you will do, what will be accomplished. The second page will be your opportunity to honestly state what your day tomorrow will really be like.

For bonus points, write a third page and discuss the tension between the two, what makes you happy or unhappy about it, and how you will shift your day tomorrow by looking at both of these plans, creating a new, possible day that’s somewhere between.

Writing Assignment: Write About Your Plans For Tomorrow is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

This old house isn’t really that old. We bought it new in 1993. It’s a great house in a quiet neighborhood nestled amongst mature oaks and maple trees. This is the home of my daughters’ childhood. And slowly, methodically, we’ve adapted this house to our needs, tastes, and preferences.

The first thing we did was replace all of the light fixtures. The builder had put in gaudy, cheap, shiny brass lighting everywhere. It had to go. Then we painted and decorated. Eventually we replaced the wood deck with a sun room, one of our better choices.

And, of course, we built the theater.

Recently we remodeled the kitchen and now, as I write this, carpenters are hammering and sawing away with great gusto, remodeling our bedroom, bath, and closet (the so called “master suite”—although I’m seeing it called the “owners’ suite,” an even more clumsy name). By the time that we’re done with this project we will have spent more in all of the remodeling and adaptation projects that the initial house price.

There’s always a list of projects, even for a home just twenty years old. Last year it was the roof. This year we need to paint the exterior trim. And something else, somewhere, will have to be repaired or replaced. But the bones of this old house are strong, well made, and I hope sturdy enough for many, many years to come.

A home is an expensive thing to own. But it is our home. I live and work here and I’m very comfortable in this house. While I could sell and move without looking back, there’s a part of me that would love my future grandchildren and generations beyond to think of this as the family home. I grew up in my great grandfather’s house, but never thought of it as anything but OUR home. I still cringe when I drive by our “starter” home. It’s just down the road from here. I see the condition that the present owners have let it sink to. It’s sad and so unnecessary. Even though it hasn’t been mine for twenty years I still think of it still as our home.

Memory is what makes a house a home, not title or deed. When you live somewhere, shape it to become your home, you imprint yourself on it in the same way that it takes up residence in your dreams and remembrances.

I’m looking forward to the new suite and the big glass shower. This is our home, for now, and forever remembered.

This Old House is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

I keep my hair and beard close cropped. When I started losing the hair on the top of my head in my early 20′s I stopped going to the barber, bought a set of clippers, and have since been cutting it myself. It was economical and convenient, especially when my wife could check the back of my head and neck to make sure that I hadn’t fouled things up.

Then I had back surgery. The recovery is going well, but slowly. So when my head started to get woolly I decided to let someone else cut my hair.

It was wonderful. I’d forgotten why. I got the same shearing, but even closer that I can manage. I like my hair this short, my wife really doesn’t (I’d just shave it all off if I had my way). I think it looks better with my beard trimmed up and the edges shaved and clean looking. I also received a shampoo and a scalp massage, all while relaxing with a hot towel steamed with tea tree oil resting on my face. Finish that off with a shoulder massage and I was ready to face the world again. I really felt better, a step further in my general healing.

I’d forgotten the simple pleasure of the intimate contact that getting one’s hair cut provides. A stranger’s skilled and soft touch on my face and scalp was soothing and reminded me about the hundreds of haircuts I’d received before.

In general I don’t like to be touched by strangers, but I think that’s a lie I tell myself. While being touched by random stranger may be unwelcome, there’s an entire class of intimate strangers who are trained, licensed, and given permission to touch. The caring touch of the dental hygienist soothes in those awkward moments of having one’s mouth probed and teeth cleaned. The physical therapist, even when working deep in the tissue, can speed healing and create a better understanding of my own body, just with their touch. And there’s nothing quite like a proper massage from a licensed therapist.

I think that I’ll retire my clippers for a while and make a regular trip to the barber. I no longer see it as a chore. It’s a treat, something special to help me look good and feel good.

There are so many pleasures in life that we too frequently deny ourselves. Human contact shouldn’t be one of them.

And for you obsessive compulsives out there: Two Bits.

And for your listening pleasure, Try Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance“

Shave And A Haircut is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Playwrighting is hard work. Over the past few years, while working on multiple other projects, I’ve been researching and planning for a big new play, one that I think has real potential for production and audience interest. I have an entire shelf stacked with research. I’ve filled notebooks. I’ve had it playing in my mind, in many variations, for years now.

And I’d planned to use the recovery period from recent surgery to write the first draft. I was excited about it. It gave me something to focus on other than the scary surgery and long recovery (I’m doing very well, thanks).

And then, just as I was feeling well enough to start some light work, an idea started to form in my mind. Something really interesting. Something new. I thought at first it might be a short story or novella. Then it got bigger and looked like a novel. I don’t want to write a novel right now.

Then one night, just before going to sleep, inspiration struck, and struck hard. It’s a play. I knew how to write it. There’s nothing to be done but to set out and do it. I bought a stack of yellow legal pads and began scribbling. It’s flowing out. Strange, weird stuff that I’m not sure I want people who know me to read.

That’s a good sign. I think.

This play may be unproduceable, but I have to write it. It may be the price I pay to write the planned work. Or the planned work may never get written. Other things like this may elbow it out of the way.

As a business writer I plan and write what I need to, but as a creative artist I write what I must. There’s no negotiating with inspiration. I’ve come to believe that inspiration is a welcome event, even if it derails current projects. It’s often inconvenient, uncomfortable, and insistent.

I’m writing this play that the muse demands be written. I’ve promised myself ten pages a day, but I’ll soon double that. Then I’ll take those handwritten pages and head to the keyboard for the first revision. Then I’ll read it aloud and rewrite it again. At that point I’ll look for a theater company or group of actors to do a reading. Then I’ll rewrite.

I am not completely in control of this process. But I am not merely a conduit. The skills that I’ve honed, the lessons that I’ve learned, all come into play (and no, that’s not a pun). It feels good to write with this drive and abandon.

I have only this advice to offer: when inspiration strikes, strike back.

When Inspiration Strikes is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

There’s no such thing as useless knowledge.

There are depths of trivia that can startle and worry those who haven’t thought about a subject. “That’s not important,” they say. “How could you possibly use that?”

And yet, knowledge, any knowledge, understanding how things work, why they work, and what may be possible, is incredibly, amazingly valuable.

I’m a successful writer because I know a great deal about a lot of subjects. But even more important, I know that things that I don’t know about have depths to explore, and somewhere, probably within reach of a keyboard, are people who have plumbed those depths and are willing to go deeper. Better yet, I know that they’re eager to share what they know. And I know how to talk with them, one geek to another.

Here’s an example: name the most successful movie franchise in the last five years.

It’s Marvel Comics based movies: Spider-man, Captain America, Thor, Ironman, and The Avengers, their sequels, and variants (i.e., The Hulk). From among all of those nerds, those masters of useless knowledge about superhero comics, many are making a living because of what they know and the not so useless knowledge that they’ve mastered. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are all based on this tiny realm of useless knowledge.

Explore what interests you. Dive deep into what you love. Have no expectations of what you might do with that.

I’m writing a play at this moment that I’m pretty sure is unproduceable. That doesn’t matter. I need to write it. And I’m a playwright. I’m not the one who has to figure out how to stage the thing. I was pretty sure my play on the creator of the modern clown in the early 1800′s couldn’t be staged, and yet it has had many productions, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August. It’s the most successful thing I’ve written and audiences are moved by something that, before I wrote the play, was claimed to be deep and useless trivia.

No knowledge is useless. A writer can and will use everything.

Enjoy the dive.

Useless Knowledge is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!